Bazaar Source Control – Too Hard to Get Started

I need a personal source control system for my development.

As a big believer in Open Source solutions I took a careful look at Bazaar. But alas, I could not get started with Bazaar.

My requirements are:

  1. Client / Server with both Windows and Linux clients.
  2. A GUI interface. I’m not interested in dealing with a command line interface. I want to look at a window and instantly know which files have been changed and need to be checked in.
  3. Avoid IDE integration because I’ll be using several different IDEs.
  4. Simple to add new projects. I don’t want to spend a lot of time dealing with Source Control.
  5. Low – read zero – cost.
  6. Open Source would be nice, but not required.

After looking around and doing a lot googling I found Bazaar.

Bazaar is an Open Source solution brought to us by the folks that built Ubuntu.

There is some documentation, but the walk-though to get started doesn’t really go far enough to get going.

I posted a couple of questions to the Launchpad forum.

I still don’t know how to use Bazaar. Here are the issues that I have.

  • While client/ server obviously works since lots of folks out there use it. It is complicated to set up a server. You apparently need a web server, and python and then you can install Bazaar.
  • The GUI client is confusing to use. Even if you Collocate your repository, which is OK for a single system development, the GUI layout does not look like you might expect, so you have to figure out a new paradigm for using it. Instead of being designed based on the often used model of showing a tree of the checked in files, the dialogs waste a lot of space with lists that don’t help you get the job done.
  • The GUI client apparently does not support all the functions that you need. If, for example, you want to get a file from a previous revision, the function is not easily found where you might expect. Perhaps the function is available, but it’s not easy to find.
  • Bazaar looks as if the GUI is an after thought and the primary usage model is a command line interface.

If you can’t get going in a few hours, then, in my view, Bazaar fails as a viable SCM solution.

– windy